


All Hope is (Not) Lost

by accidentallyanoctopus



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Almost everyone is dead, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Mann vs. Machine, Narration switches between Pyro and Miss Pauling, Nonbinary Character, Other, Scout is Will, Sniper is Mick, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 00:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2712929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accidentallyanoctopus/pseuds/accidentallyanoctopus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nowhere to go when your only home is destroyed, when your only friends are here with you or nothing but blood and shrapnel, entombed in concrete and rebar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1: Pyro POV

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a canon-divergence AU where most of the mercs are killed off in the first paragraph. Yaaaay. Kind of a writing experiment.

He's howling with rage and misery as you carry him out of the building, fighting you with every step you take. “We have to go back!” he sobs, pounding on your back with his fists. “Miss Pauling is in there! We have to go back, you fucking abomination! LISTEN TO ME!”

“Can't go back,” you reply, though you know he won't be able to understand you. “It's too late. We can't go back.” You honestly don't want to leave anyone behind, but when a building's about to explode in less than a minute, you have to make sacrifices. Scout must be too young and idealistic to understand that. It makes you envy him a little, and pity him a lot.

Once you reach Sniper's van, you toss him into the passenger seat, strapping him down as he claws at you, wailing about Miss Pauling. You climb over him and into the driver's seat. The van's owner is slumped against you, his shallow breaths only comforting because they mean he's still alive. You put the van into gear and leave your dead and dying teammates behind you for the last time, ignoring Scout's tortured cry as the warehouse explodes. There's no time for feelings when the world's about to end.

Scout eventually cries himself to exhaustion, falling asleep as the van bounces along the highway. You take your gas mask off - no need for it, no need to protect your identity when everyone is after you anyway. Besides, it makes it hard to see the road. You turn randomly, going in no direction, just away, as far away as you can. Nowhere to go when your only home is destroyed, when your only friends are here with you or nothing but blood and shrapnel, entombed in concrete and rebar. Miss Pauling, dead and gone. Tavish the Demoman, Misha the Heavy, Klaus the Medic, Hector the Spy, Jane the Soldier, all dead. Your beloved Engineer, your sweetheart, your Dell, dead and gone. All dead, dead, dead....

No! You have to focus. You're a survivor, and survivors do what they're best at: surviving. The time and place for mourning will come, but it's not here, not now. Then, after that, vengeance. You'll fucking make those bastards pay, send them to Hell with a roaring inferno, do what _you're_ best at. Taking a random exit, you turn off the highway onto the darkening desert roads.

 


	2. Part 2 Pyro's PoV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their quiet conversations lull you into drowsiness despite the severity of the situation you're facing. This is how you find sleep, in the front seat of Sniper's van, wrapped in a blanket, warm and safe, at least for now.

You finally run out of gas several hours later, and the van shudders to a stop alongside a bumpy gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Scout stirs as the vehicle jerks and rumbles in protest. “Wuzgoinon?”

He looks at you, blearily for a moment, before his gaze turns furious and he lunges, tackling you out the door of the van. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” he screams, swinging his fists at your face and chest. “You just left them to die! Miss Pauling, Engie, Medic, Spy...they're probably all dead now cuz of you! MISS PAULING IS DEAD CUZ OF YOU!” He begins to cry again, screeching sobs into the twilight. You take the abuse silently, knowing he'll come to his senses soon enough.

Suddenly, there's a soft, wheezy, whimpering sound from inside the van. Scout looks away from you, and sees Sniper, who has regained consciousness slightly. “Mick!” he yells, crawling off of you and back into the van. He pulls the Australian into his lap, shaking him. “Mick, can ya hear me? You in there, Snipes?” Sniper lets out another whimper, but his eyes open.

“Stop shaking me, I'm gonna chundah if you keep doing that,” he mumbles, but Scout doesn't seem to hear him, and continues to shake the poor man. “Stop,” he says again, louder. Yet again, Scout doesn't listen. “STOP!” Sniper finally bellows, making a gagging noise. Scout stops immediately, pulling the other man into a tight embrace.

“MickeyMickMickeyMickMick,” he mumbles as he rocks the older man from side to side. “They're dead, they're all dead, Mick, oh my god.” He's still sobbing, but it's quieter now, less angry.

“Who's dead, Will?” Sniper's brows knit in confusion. “What's going on?” He looks around. “Where the bloody hell are we?” He looks at you. “Pyro?” You wave in acknowledgement. “Oh, so that's what you look like.”

“Look like what?” Scout says before he turns to look at you as well. “Holy shit, I didn't even notice!” He laughs, more in shock than amusement. “You ain't half bad looking, you know that?” You cover your face with a hand shyly, giggling as well. Sniper joins in, and soon you're all laughing hysterically, cathartically, howling like crazed wolves in the near-darkness.

Though Sniper was the last to start laughing, he's the first to stop, hushing you all quickly. “Shh, shh,” he hisses. “We'll attract something if we keep this ruckus up.” You and Scout nod, quieting yourselves. “Now, tell me what in God's name is going on.”

“Like I fucking said, everyone's dead, Mick. Graymann set a freaking bomb in the warehouse, blew everything to smithereens. Mumbles and I escaped somehow. Dunno why you were unconscious, though.” Scout looks at you for an explanation.

“Someone threw a rock at you while we were coming back from that job,” you say quietly. “Some of Graymann's lackeys, I think. They were yelling something about a bomb, and when I got back, everyone was panicking. So I grabbed Scout, cuz he was the closest to me, and got out of there as quick as I could. There was no time to save anyone else. I'm sorry.”

Sniper takes a few seconds to respond. “So...Spook, Engie, Solly, the whole team?”

“All dead. I think Miss Pauling is, too. And I doubt respawn survived the explosion. ” Sniper sighs, shaking his head.

“Christ. So you just drove in any old direction, I'm guessing? Cuz none of this looks familiar.” You nod. Scout has begun to cry again, burying his face into Sniper's chest.

“Oh, Roo,” Sniper says soothingly, rubbing his back. You'd never really noticed how close the two of them were until now. Sure, you knew they were friends, but this is something different. You realize now that there were a lot of things you had never noticed about your teammates, so lost were you in your own relationship with Dell, not to mention the vivid hallucinations you're still struggling with. Your heart and stomach sink when you realize that your medication is back at the base, and therefore probably buried under tons of rubble, unusable.

With the sun finally below the horizon, the desert quickly turns cold. Scout helps you back up into the van, and Sniper throws you a blanket from his bed. It smells like tobacco and gun oil, like how you imagine the rest of Sniper must smell. You wiggle out of your uniform once the other two climb into Sniper's bunk, curling around eachother like they've done this dozens of times before. Their quiet conversations lull you into drowsiness despite the severity of the situation you're facing. This is how you find sleep, in the front seat of Sniper's van, wrapped in a blanket, warm and safe, at least for now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pyro takes anti-psychotics for schizophrenia, if you're wondering.


	3. Part 1 Miss Pauling's PoV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please,” you whisper. “Please don't tell me I'm the only survivor. Please.”

You come to, and the first sensation you feel is anger. Hot, fiery, directionless anger, like burning acid and molten lead. It matches perfectly with the pounding rhythm of your heartbeat, the pain pulsing in your skull. You try to stand, but instead, you hit your head on the solid surface above you, and you collapse back to the floor with a whimper.

You take a deep, shuddering breath as you try to collect your bearings. The air smells of gunpowder and burning flesh as you crawl out from your hiding place, and you soon realize why. The entire warehouse is but a shell, collapsing in on itself. Bits of blood-soaked machinery and gore-encrusted concrete litter the floor in massive chunks. Who could have done this?

The name immediately pops into your head. _Graymann._ Who else but that conniving, robot-building, brother-murdering, company-overtaking bastard? Your anger fuels your muscles as you rise to your feet, making your way through the rubble. You're going to get him fucking killed, if you don't do it yourself first. But the question is: did any of the mercenaries survive? You have little to no hope that respawn would still be working. If Graymann had any common sense, he would have disabled that first. 

The first corpses you find are Heavy's and Medic's. The former is laying on top of the latter, as if he was protecting the doctor from the explosion like a human shield. Though Heavy seems to have died instantly, Medic must have taken longer to die, bleeding out or burning alive as he was crushed by his massive companion's sheer bulk. You wonder if he would have appreciated that irony, of the one trying to save him accidentally causing his death instead. Probably; the doctor was a strange man, to say the least.

The next corpse is the barely-recognizable form of Soldier. He must have been standing close to the actual explosion, based on the state of his body. Demoman's mangled corpse lies next to him, his hand on what appears to be the remnants of the explosive device. He was probably trying to disable it when the blast happened, confirming your theory about Soldier's injuries. The only thing you find of Engineer is a severed arm, the one with the mechanical hand. Does that mean he's still alive, or is his body buried under the rubble? All these questions, and few, if any, answers. 

Spy lies in a pool of his own blood close to door. He appears to have been trampled as the others tried to escape, then struck in the head with a piece of flying debris. There's no sign of Scout, Pyro, or Sniper. Did they escape? Are they alive? You gingerly step over Spy's body as you seek answers outside, muttering apologies though there's no one to hear them.

Medic's doves are perched on the parched and singed skeleton of a tree a few hundred yards away from the warehouse. Sniper's van is nowhere in sight, and you silently pray to a god you've never really believed in that it means that he, Scout, and Pyro were able to escape.

“Please,” you whisper. “Please don't tell me I'm the only survivor. Please.”

 


End file.
